January 04,
2013 "Information
Clearing House"
- Marking the first US drone attacks of 2013,
the Obama administration ordered two separate
missile bombardments in Pakistan and Yemen on
Wednesday and Thursday.

The latest
attacks demonstrate that the drawdown of US-led
occupying forces in Afghanistan will be accompanied
by an expansion of illegal drone operations across
the Middle East. At least 16 people were reported
killed, all alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters,
though details of each incident are still emerging
and Washington routinely covers up the killing of
civilians in drone strikes.

On Wednesday
night, approximately 10:40 pm local time, Pakistani
Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir, also known as Mullah
Nazir, was among several people killed in South
Waziristan, the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Nazir is among the most prominent figures to have
been assassinated in recent years, having led one of
the four Taliban factions in the Waziristan region.

Different
reports that have emerged since the strike claim
that Nazir was killed by at least two missiles fired
either at a vehicle in which he was travelling near
Wana, the largest town in South Waziristan, or at a
house near Wana. Reports differ on how many other
people were killed, with some sources suggesting
eight or nine additional casualties.

Unnamed
Pakistani officials were cited confirming that
Nazir’s senior deputies, Atta Ullah and Rafey Khan,
were among the dead. These sources also claimed the
others killed were Nazir’s Taliban associates.
Thousands reportedly attended the funerals of the
men, and markets and shops closed in those parts of
South Waziristan that Nazir controlled.

Yesterday,
another two drone missiles struck North Waziristan,
killing four more alleged Taliban militants,
reportedly including two Uzbek nationals, as they
were travelling in a car. Multiple sources report
that a second round of drone missiles was fired when
people nearby attempted to recover the bodies,
though it is not known if more people were killed or
injured as a result.

On the same
day as the atrocity in North Waziristan, three
alleged members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
were killed while travelling in a car in Redaa, in
the southern Yemeni province of Al Bayda. Redaa is
where a US drone strike killed 11 civilians,
including three children, on September 2.

Reuters cited
a Yemeni government official as claiming that a
Yemeni aircraft carried out the latest strike in
Redaa, but local people who saw the US drone
responsible contradicted him. Washington has ordered
a series of drone attacks in Yemen in recent days,
enjoying the full support of its stooge, President
Mansour Al Hadi. (See “US
drone strikes continue in Yemen” .)

Pentagon Press
Secretary George Little spoke with reporters off
camera yesterday about the drone strike that killed
Maulvi Nazir. Without explicitly acknowledging US
responsibility, he declared: “If the reports are
true, this would be a significant blow and would be
very helpful, not just to the United States but also
to our Pakistani partners and the Afghans… This is
someone who had a great deal of blood on his hands.”

President
Barack Obama in fact bears responsibility for the
continued bloodletting in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Yemen. While Washington is currently in a de facto
alliance with Al Qaeda-connected militia groups
fighting against the Syrian government, the
so-called “war on terror” remains the pretext for
its military operations across the Middle East.

The New
York Times reported in November that drone
strikes are estimated to have killed at least 2,500
people. This is likely a significant
underestimation.

The
British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ)
has calculated that by August 2011, 2,347 people had
been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan alone. The
total included at least 392 civilians, 175 of them
children. The Obama administration refuses to tally
civilian deaths, arbitrarily labelling all males
within a drone target area as “combatants” unless
there is evidence proving otherwise.

Maulvi Nazir
headed one of the Pakistani Taliban factions that
had reached an agreement with the Pakistani
military, with both sides pledging that their forces
would not target one another. Nazir was allied with
Hafiz Gul Bahadur, leader of another militia in
North Waziristan who had also signed a peace pact
with the Pakistani military.

Some Pakistani
army commanders labelled the two figures “good
Taliban.” Nazir funnelled fighters across the Afghan
border to participate in operations against the
US-NATO occupying forces and also allegedly
sheltered members of various Al Qaeda-affiliated
groups, while at the same time cooperating with the
Pakistani military. He collaborated with the army’s
2009 offensive against rival Taliban factions, which
the government in Islamabad launched under intense
pressure from the Obama administration.

Nazir had been
targeted by rival Islamist militia leaders who have
launched attacks against Pakistani military and
government targets. In November, he narrowly
survived a suicide bomb attack that was reportedly
organised by the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP).

The London
Telegraph ’s Rob Crilly noted: “This could well
herald a new time of instability as other militant
factions try to vie for control… There is also a
question of what this means for US-Pakistan
relations. Mullah Nazir was very much an American
target who, I suspect, Pakistan would have been
happy to leave alone, so there is a question mark
over what this means.”

The Pakistani
government, dependent on US military and financial
aid, publicly opposes the drone strikes as a
violation of the country’s sovereignty, while
privately permitting Washington to proceed. It is
unclear whether any government or military figures
in Islamabad were consulted before Nazir’s
assassination, but the Obama administration has made
clear that irrespective of any considerations of
international law, it claims the right to murder
anyone, including American citizens, anywhere on the
planet.

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